Japanese is a very limited language which is why they use more loan words and onomatopoeia, but a lot of the older generation don't like that younger people are using English and American loan words more frequently.

Kozaru:In Japan there are entire dictionaries full of English loan words targeted at older folks who aren't up to date on the hip lingo kids are using these days.

Which, given that the Japanese, esepcially the older ones, have never REALLY renounced that whole "Ve are Ze Master Race" thing, at least in their hearts that's GOT to be killing them. However if my linguistic studies via Saturday Night Live are correct, nearly any word can be "japanese-ified" simply by adding "Duhduh" to the end

What was annoying to me during my time in Japan was the use of borrowed words to make things sound racier or more sinister when perfectly good Japanese words existed. For example, when the bodies of a pair of murder victims were found wrapped in a blue tarp, the reported kept talking about ブルー シツ (buru shiatsu, or "blue sheets").

In the long run, this kind of thing must fail. Loan words only shock because they are new, like changes in meaning or grammar. The school-marms of prescriptive grammar attempt to hold back the flood but they ultimately fail because the masses ignore their prescriptions or only adopt them in special contexts, such as when talking to school marms.

And because it is the novelty that is the crime, the school marms and prescrptive grammarians fail to recognize the many thousands or tens of thousands of cases that have been accepted in the past.

Take, for example, the tendancy to form nouns from verbs. When the jargon or slang is new, this shocks the monkey out of the old folks and those who have diligently followed the rules, but there are already thousands of old nouns made from verbs.

You may resist a new verb such as "to impact" and insist on "to have an impact on", but it is a losing game. Resistence is futile.

Some of the worst novelties will die out--slang is constantly changing because the in group that creates it abandons it for some newer, shinier thing or in disgust when other people adopt it. The song "My generation" contains the protest of one such young fool. Argot because useless once the cops catch on, and slang becomes outmoded when the old folks (anybody over 25) start using it.

The same is true of loan words.

There are more non-Anglo Saxon words in English than there are Anglo Saxon words. The Anglo-Saxon vocabulary is about 10,000 words perhaps. French gave English sever times that many.

Those innovations that are not so fugly that they continue to shock after more than a generation in use often go native and become invisible even to the prickliest of prescriptions. The most a prescriptionist can hope to do is explain why we should say one thing rather than another. We do lose a lot of valuable words and grammar if nobody fights back.

Personally, I am annoyed by the anglicized or americanized pronounciation of several foreign words which I think could easily and should be pronounced as in the original French. Mauve (German, IIRC) and clique are two of my pet peeves. There's no need to change their pronuncation. They are easy to say. We have the vowels we need for the job.

Then there is this BS abou coyote or coyoté. Three pronunciations, each stupider than the last. Not to mention pseudo-hispanic variants.

Mind you, it can be annoying to listen to someone who uses too many foreign borrowings, and even worse in the use of pseudo-foreign words that "sound" English or what have you.

All languages have these. In English we say things the French do not, such as cul de sac for impasse and nom de plume where a French person might use nom de guerre. The French recognize that the suffix "-ing" is peculiarly English, so they have invented a number of pseudo-English words such as le shampooing and le haut-standing. There are many of these fake words in France, fewer perhaps in Quebec where faux amis and cognates used in a foreign sense are more common among both Montreal English and Quebec French. Bienvenu(e) for you're welcome is an example. In French, bienvenu(e) literally means you are well come. It does not mean thank you.

The Quebec Office de la langue nationale has done some good work (and some foolishness) in creating French terms so Quebec francophones don't have to speak half-in-English, half-in-French. Many of these terms have been accepted in common usage and it's just as well.

On the other hand, I am fascinated and delighted by the verbal calesthentics that the actors on L'Acadie Man, a cartoon set in New Brunswick display. They can switch between French and English and several hybrids thereof at well. It adds a whole new level, or levels, to language.

Perfect bilingualism (native speakers of two or more languages at once) means you have what engineers call several degrees of freedom not available to unilingual speakers or even those who have learned a foreign language or two.

I. Am. Amazed. I love it.

Prescriptivism would kill all these wonderful linguistic freedoms by forcing us to speak one language, codified forever.

Instead we get to play freely and invent the language or languages we need as we go along.

There is something to say for rules, but as JHC said, "Man is not made for the Sabbath, but Sabbath for Man."

The question, as Humpty Dumpty said wisely, is who is to be master. That is all. One should be master of one's language, not slave to it.

Freedom and natural language are not cut and dried museum pieces. They change. Change is of their essence. The world changes and the language changes with it, changing it, and being changed by it, in a perpetual interaction beyond the control of control freaks and even governments.

In the long run, this kind of thing must fail. Loan words only shock because they are new, like changes in meaning or grammar. The school-marms of prescriptive grammar attempt to hold back the flood but they ultimately fail because the masses ignore their prescriptions or only adopt them in special contexts, such as when talking to school marms.

And because it is the novelty that is the crime, the school marms and prescrptive grammarians fail to recognize the many thousands or tens of thousands of cases that have been accepted in the past.

Take, for example, the tendancy to form nouns from verbs. When the jargon or slang is new, this shocks the monkey out of the old folks and those who have diligently followed the rules, but there are already thousands of old nouns made from verbs.

You may resist a new verb such as "to impact" and insist on "to have an impact on", but it is a losing game. Resistence is futile.

Some of the worst novelties will die out--slang is constantly changing because the in group that creates it abandons it for some newer, shinier thing or in disgust when other people adopt it. The song "My generation" contains the protest of one such young fool. Argot because useless once the cops catch on, and slang becomes outmoded when the old folks (anybody over 25) start using it.

The same is true of loan words.

There are more non-Anglo Saxon words in English than there are Anglo Saxon words. The Anglo-Saxon vocabulary is about 10,000 words perhaps. French gave English sever times that many.

Those innovations that are not so fugly that they continue to shock after more than a generation in use often go native and become invisible even to the prickliest of prescriptions. The most a prescriptionist can hope to do is explain why we should say one thing rather than another. We do lose a lot of valuable words and grammar if nobody fights back.

Personally, I am annoyed by the anglicized or americanized pronounciation of several foreign ...

Research from just a bit back shows that for the most parts words don't last more than a few thousand years before they are replaced by a completely unrelated word. Notably long lasting words: spit, bark, and worm. Go figure.

/this is also why jurors should avoid 'going to the dictionary'. Laws and speech are a product or their time and intent.

In the long run, this kind of thing must fail. Loan words only shock because they are new, like changes in meaning or grammar. The school-marms of prescriptive grammar attempt to hold back the flood but they ultimately fail because the masses ignore their prescriptions or only adopt them in special contexts, such as when talking to school marms.

And because it is the novelty that is the crime, the school marms and prescrptive grammarians fail to recognize the many thousands or tens of thousands of cases that have been accepted in the past.

Take, for example, the tendancy to form nouns from verbs. When the jargon or slang is new, this shocks the monkey out of the old folks and those who have diligently followed the rules, but there are already thousands of old nouns made from verbs.

You may resist a new verb such as "to impact" and insist on "to have an impact on", but it is a losing game. Resistence is futile.

Some of the worst novelties will die out--slang is constantly changing because the in group that creates it abandons it for some newer, shinier thing or in disgust when other people adopt it. The song "My generation" contains the protest of one such young fool. Argot because useless once the cops catch on, and slang becomes outmoded when the old folks (anybody over 25) start using it.

The same is true of loan words.

There are more non-Anglo Saxon words in English than there are Anglo Saxon words. The Anglo-Saxon vocabulary is about 10,000 words perhaps. French gave English sever times that many.

Those innovations that are not so fugly that they continue to shock after more than a generation in use often go native and become invisible even to the prickliest of prescriptions. The most a prescriptionist can hope to do is explain why we should say one thing rather than another. We do lose a lot of valuable words and grammar if nobody fights back.

Personally, I am annoyed by the anglicized or americanized pronounciation of several foreign ...

Americanization of the Japanese language? Hah. Meanwhile, American English just ran around the world and came back with a cart full of foreign words that will be swallowed up by it and become part of the lexicon.

Language isn't static. The English we speak today is very different from the English spoken five hundred years ago. It's even different from the English spoken fifty years ago. You can't keep language in a bubble. It doesn't work that way. Even if you sue the begesus out everyone who talks slightly different from you what you think is standard. Language is going to change.

Wikipedia:In 1990, in the Usenet group rec.arts.sf-lovers, Nicoll wrote the following epigram on the English language:

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary

A followup to the original post acknowledged that the spelling of 'riffle' was a misspelling of 'rifle'.:end wiki quote

And wikipedia is wrong on the the previous sentence. Riffle is a perfectly cormulent word meaning to shuffle through items, perhaps looking for something. It's also canoeing jargon for a minor river current in shallow water just makes some small waves.

DontMakeMeComeBackThere:Maul555: Da Fuq? I am an American and I cant even understand these Americanized words... I hope this guy wins the lawsuit! This is like fighting against spanglish!

Japanese is hamstrung by their phonetic kanji, so they can't just take an English word as-is because they can't write it. So it gets changed to the extent they can write it phonetically.

So says my Japanese major of a son - native speakers can correct my ham-fisted explanation.

They use katakana to transliterate foreign loan words and loan phrases, even in some cases where the individual words which make up the phrase already have proper kanji translations, since the context of the combination of words might not translate as easily; alternatively, the words or phrases may be transliterated instead of translated to emphasize the fact that the words or phrases were created and/or are primarily used by CAPITALIST AMERICAN PIG-DOGS or other foreigners.

It's roughly the equivalent of us typing loan words in italicized text instead of plain text.

Agnes Gonxha's Confidant:Interesting. I detest the use of loan words when there are perfectly good, explicit equivalents.

People all over the world replace their native words with english ones, to show separate themselves from the poor people.

It's all fun and games until someone has kids... and you should hear their kids speak.

Poor native language vocabulary and terrible english.

/joke's on them I guess

No sure I follow you.

The use

DontMakeMeComeBackThere:Maul555: Da Fuq? I am an American and I cant even understand these Americanized words... I hope this guy wins the lawsuit! This is like fighting against spanglish!

Japanese is hamstrung by their phonetic kanji, so they can't just take an English word as-is because they can't write it. So it gets changed to the extent they can write it phonetically.

So says my Japanese major of a son - native speakers can correct my ham-fisted explanation.

That's pretty much it.

Japanese syllabary (actually not "kanji" but "kana") nearly all end with a vowel sound. The only (natural) consonant syllable ending in Japanese is the "n/m" sound. Although, it's not uncommon for ending vowel sounds to be dropped from words (e.g. "desu" is pronounced "des") . Also there's the whole L/R thing, which is a real issue. Often you can be reading the (katakana) version of an English word and just not recognize it bacause you are reading the symbols as Rs and they are actually representing an English L sound.

Kanji are the 2,000 or so symbols borrowed from Chinese that are integral to the Japanese writing system.

There's also the issue that Japanese doesn't just Japanize the pronunciation of English loanwords, they usually hack them to pieces, too. Most commonly this is done by taking a two-word English phrase, Japanizing the spelling, then taking the first two syllables of the first word and mashing it together with the first two syllables of the second word, creating an entirely new piece of nonsense in both languages.

They also use some words outright like "banana" or 'dynamic".I married a Japanese girl, and when I went to visit her family, her mom saw the rather nice ring I got and said a bunch of stuff, but I picked out the word 'immitation'. I told her it wasn't an immitation and she was *shocked* I knew what she said. I was like "Yeah, that's an english word you used"